Romanian school system

Schools in Romania are very different than schools in America. Fist of all, the schools are often too small to house all the students, so there’s two different time schedules. Half of the students go to classes from 8:00 AM until 2:00 PM. The other half of the students have classes from 1:00 PM until 6:00 PM. Most often, the elementary school students are in the afternoon and the middle/high school students are in the mornings. And students are put together in a class, and then stay with that same class all day, every day. Like in American elementary schools. But these classes stay together for the entire time a student is at that school, most often for five years.

Another thing is the students stay in one class room all day andthe teacher’s rotate. Classes are 50 minutes long, with a 10 minute break between them. In the break the students stay in the class room while the teacher goes to the teacher lounge to get the materials needed for the next hour. During this time there is no adult in the classroom with the students, so things sometimes get really crazy. I’m special because I have my own classroom and the students come to me for lessons. My classroom is very small, with only 15 desks so my largest class should have only 15 students but that’s not always the case. I have one class of about 25 students, meaning kids are sharing seats and tables, and some are just standing in the back. I don’t have seating chart for that class, so it’s always a mad rush to get to class first to get a seat.

Another thing that’s different is the class schedule. Every day is different. Students can study up to 17 different subjects every week, so trying to fit that in every week can be a little confusing. In fifth grade students choose an intensive, something like a major. The students I teach are English Intensive, so they have three hours of English every week. Normally they have to study another language as well, so a lot of them have two hours of German or French as well. One of the classes I teach is students who speak Hungarian as a first language, so they have Romanian lessons as well. Can you picture it? 3 hours a week of Romanian, 3 hours a week of English and two hours a week of French plus other classes?! But these students may only have one hour a week of math, or one hour of gym. It all depends on what they’re intensive is.

The most important thing for a student is his/her grade. Grades here are represented in numbers, not letters like we have in the States. A 1 is the worst grade and a 10 is the best. If a student gets an 8, he/she will probably start crying. Grades are very important here because getting into a high school is very competitive. Unless a student has all 10’s, he/she won’t get into the best high school. It’s very stressful for students. Grades are recorded in a giant book called a catalog. Each class has their own catalog that the teacher’s carry around and guard. At night, all the catalog’s are locked in a giant box in the teacher’s lounge which is locked itself. These books record everything-from absents, to grades, to behavior, to parent’s phone numbers. Everything. I think that’s why they’re so big; one catalog is about the size of my torso.

Those are the main differences between the schools. When I first got to Romania, I was very confused and it took me a couple months to get used to them. But now that I understand the system, I don’t have any more problems. You can view more pics of my school and classroom here.